In their dugout at Coors Field, the Rockies are enjoying themselves. Yorvit Torrealba, the hottest-hitting catcher in the business, has just knocked in the biggest run in the biggest victory of the season Friday night. Second baseman Clint Barmes screams at Torrealba, “Whaaat?”

It is an expression of affection, as in, “What did you just do?”

Torrealba smiles as teammates walk by toward the clubhouse. As they step into their lair, the Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling” greets them.

The scene in the locker room a few days earlier featured just as many smiles, though the Rockies were entering the most pressure-packed week of the season. Ninety minutes before first pitch, there was a raging card game going on among Latino players Jose Contreras, Esmil Rogers and Carlos Gonzalez.

“This is our culture, what we like to do to relax,” Gonzalez said.

Across the room, pitcher Joe Beimel was drinking herbal tea. At other lockers, computers were fired up, Stewart and Seth Smith discussing fantasy football strategy while Matt Herges downloaded music.

The Rockies are anything but uptight. They have reason to enjoy themselves. They control their playoff fate after a remarkable turnaround.

For a closer look at how the club was handling the heat of a playoff chase, manager Jim Tracy, closer Huston Street, Gonzalez and Stewart granted The Post a look inside their world this past week. This is what we found:

CarGo: The confident one

Sleep is more precious than air to players after six months of baseball. Gonzalez usually wakes up around 11 a.m., his phone already crammed with text messages. “It’s pretty crazy. My friends and family pay attention. They all know we are in a race.”

His day begins late because his night ends late. He undergoes treatment on his left hamstring after each game. Ninety minutes after the last out, he returns home to Raenelle, his girlfriend since the two met in Montana during his first year of pro ball in 2003. They watch movies into the early morning hours until falling asleep.

Upon waking, he usually makes his own breakfast or lunch, loading up with carbs. He arrives at the park nearly five hours before first pitch. Even though his fluency in English allows him to make friends easily, he’s “way more comfortable than I was in Oakland” because there are so many Latino players on the team.

His work begins with batting practice. The sessions aren’t nearly as stressful as outsiders might think. Gonzalez first hits off a tee, driving the ball the opposite way. The number of cuts depends entirely on how his swing feels.

As the game gets closer, his routine gets more specific, and serious. He listens to reggaeton music on his headphones as he watches video of the opposing pitcher looping on several TVs. Warm-up follows. Then game time.

He can feel the postseason within reach. Just talking about it brings a smile to his face, as he thinks back to his first baseball idol, Venezuelan legend and former Rockies slugger Andres Galarraga.

“He’s the reason I watched the Rockies’ games. I wanted to be a Blake Street Bomber because of Gato. It’s pretty amazing that I was just a little kid not too long ago dreaming of playing on this field.”

Stewart: Football fanatic

Stewart looks tired. For good reason. He and wife, Susan, have had some restless nights. Ellsi, their 3-week-old daughter, has been wheezing and sneezing throughout the night. They worry, like any first-time parents.

“It kind of hits you during the day,” Stewart said. “That’s why they invented Red Bull.”

Stewart has been fighting a lack of sleep and a slump. He’s trying a new upright stance that he hopes creates more leverage. Working on his swing gobbles up plenty of his pregame time. That, and chatting with Smith. Their lockers are next to each other and they’ve been friends for the better part of five years coming up through the Rockies’ system.

Stewart is laid back but will often say something that sticks.

Like the word “sick.” That’s his description of something great. After Stewart botched two bunt plays in a game in Anaheim in June, manager Jim Tracy paid to have T-shirts printed up with “Sick” emblazoned across the front. The solidarity was palpable.

Stewart grew up on a baseball diamond. He still speaks almost daily to former high school teammate Blake Crosby, younger brother of Oakland’s Bobby. They talk life, talk family. Maybe even a little USC football. Stewart has an encyclopedic knowledge of the Trojans. When USC played Ohio State two weeks ago, Stewart had video coordinator Brian Jones burn a DVD so he could watch the game on his computer in his hotel room later that night.

“I am a little obsessed,” Stewart admitted.

Football gets him riled up. This whole playoff chase? It’s something he’s been preparing for his whole life.

“I know how loose we are,” Stewart said, convincingly. “Our focus is on getting into the playoffs, because once you do, anything can happen.”

Street: Creature of habit

Street owns a killer slider, but early in the week, he was thrown a nasty curve. Shelved since Sept. 1 because of a barking right biceps tendon, the closer entered Tuesday’s game against San Diego in the seventh inning for a test run, instead of pitching the ninth inning.

“Down in the bullpen, my mind was racing more than it ever does for the ninth inning,” Street said. “You think you know what’s going to happen, but you really don’t know.”

But the moment the bullpen door swung open, Street felt his focus return.

“Once I run through those doors, everything is out the window except that first-pitch strike,” he said. “I’m thinking, ‘First-pitch strike, get that first batter.’ If I say it 100 times, I say it a thousand.”

Street faced two Padres batters on this night, getting both out. He had rejoined the pennant race.

“This means everything to us, because the season is so long and grueling. It’s such a mind game,” Street said. “The two seasons I played in Oakland, when we had no chance, were the two most miserable seasons I have ever been a part of.”

Street stayed in the clubhouse until almost midnight, his postgame routine every bit as meticulous as his pregame schedule. Street goes through a series of arm exercises with team trainer Keith “Doogie” Dugger. He then chills out for 20 minutes, ice packs pressed against his shoulder, elbow, side and groin. Next, Street plunges into the hot tub, after which he takes a dip in the cold tub, and then unwinds in the sauna — each at exact 8-minute intervals.

The last player to leave the clubhouse, Street returns to his Cherry Creek townhouse where his wife, Lacey, is waiting. She’s learned to adjust to life with a ballplayer and keeping odd hours.

“We almost always watch a movie together,” Street said. “Then I play an hour of chess almost every single night.”

Street moves his bishops and pawns on chess.com. It’s his way of winding down. He used to bring his laptop to bed to play chess, until Lacey outlawed that move.

Tracy: Always prepared

At age 53, in his 32nd year of professional baseball, Jim Tracy is having the time of his life.

Sitting in his mostly bare office last week — he’s been too busy to mount many pictures or plaques — Tracy produced a letter.

“It’s from Bob Knight,” Tracy said. “We’re good friends. (He’s) a really good guy and a huge baseball fan. He told me to go after the division title, go win it.”

Knight, the former Indiana and Texas Tech basketball coach, is combative, explosive and impatient. Tracy is quiet, thoughtful and calm. It’s an odd pairing, except that they both are incredibly detail-oriented and passionate about his sport.

These days, Tracy fills his brain with information that advance scout Chris Warren generates for each series, a thick notebook containing a breakdown of each opponent.

“We call it the ‘Warren Report,’ ” Tracy said with a chuckle.

Hours before the game, Tracy is incredibly generous with his time, giving reporters, friends and well-wishers his undivided attention. But after the Rockies take batting practice, Tracy gets his quiet time.

“I like this office to be traffic-free and know that I have time to prepare,” he said.

A voracious reader of biographies, Tracy pores over the scouting report, looking for key matchups, searching for an edge that could tilt the game in the late innings.

“I use a yellow highlighter so that when I’m looking at it later, boom, that yellow jumps out at me like somebody throwing a right cross at me right across my nose,” Tracy said.

Not that Tracy’s decisions always pan out, such as his removal of starter Jason Hammel early in the seventh inning of Thursday night’s 5-4 loss to San Diego, for which he drew heat.

“I don’t question or second- guess myself with that decision at all,” he said afterward.

On his drive back home to his apartment in the Capitol Hill area, Tracy and his son, Chad, dissected the game. Usually Tracy’s wife, Debra, humors his late-night replays when he gets home. But, with the Rockies on the cusp of a playoff appearance, Debra has become an active participant.

“I was talking to her the other night, and I’m thinking to myself, ‘She actually understands what I’m telling her,’ ” Tracy said.

Troy is a former Denver Broncos and Colorado Rockies beat writer for The Denver Post. He joined the news organization in 2002 as the Rockies' beat writer and became a Broncos beat writer in 2014 before assuming the lead role ahead of the 2015 season. He left The Post in 2015.

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